{
 "id": "robert-w-service/the-pines",
 "title": "The Pines",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert W. Service",
 "poet_slug": "robert-w-service",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of a Sourdough",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-a-sourdough",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1907,
  "venue": "Songs of a Sourdough (1907)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-w-service_songs-of-a-sourdough",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25546",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 27,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 83,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grey moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To the niggard lands were we driven; ’twixt desert and floe are we penned.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of deathlike sleep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier-creep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Wind of the East, wind of the West, wandering to and fro,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We spring from the gloom of the canyon’s womb; in the valley’s lap we lie;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the white foam-fringe where the breakers cringe to the peaks that tusk the sky",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Gain to the verge of the hogback ridge where the vision ranges free:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sun, moon and stars, give answer; shall we not staunchly stand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last lone land!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}